Friday, 8 July 2016

Finally Some Eggs

I've been checking my milkweed plants every day since before the end of June and finally today I found 3 eggs!

I picked the leaves and have put the stems in a glass of water to keep fresh so the newly hatched larvae will get a good start. See? They're not that hard to spot when inspecting the underside of a milkweed leaf.

Egg 1

The milkweed flowers have been in bloom for over a week now so I figured the monarchs just needed a good, hot day to lay eggs.

Eggs 2 & 3

Since the monarch can often lay over 100 eggs, I'm going to take another look tomorrow. Skip and I are going out of town Sunday - Tuesday so I'll try to set each egg or larva up with it's own fresh milkweed leaves using separate canning jars. It worked last year so I'm confident it will work this year. Then I won't need a 'sitter' to look after them while we're away.

At the Monarch Sanctuary at Pelee Point, adult monarchs are already emerging (eclosing). When that happens, she provides sweet stuff for the adult to feed on before the long journey south. I'll try the same thing when mine emerge a few weeks from now.

Until then, I'll keep combing the local milkweed patches and the plants around our house for eggs and larvae. My goal this year is getting at least 20 to adulthood.

One more thing... Skip and I dropped into Value Village yesterday for a quick look. I've picked up very nice yarn there a couple of times. There weren't many knitting books but the one I did see was one I've wanted to get for a while - Judith Durant's 'Increase, Decrease".

Yippee!! It's the companion to Leslie Ann Bestor's 'Cast On, Bind Off' which I also own.